Tag Archives: Lent

It’s a late bloomer, this Christmas Cactus of mine. But I can’t mind too awful much. I may be its downfall, for making its everyday life too sweet for a more timely blooming.

You see, only in December did I learn, when others were blooming and mine was not, that a Christmas Cactus sometimes requires a little taste of drought and darkness to bring it to its blooming senses. Mine had never suffered such harsh realities — no, it did not. Instead, it was a sunbathing fool, living it up next to my kitchen sink. Why, with all that abundant light and delicious water it received during its first year in its new home, my little cactus child must have sensed it would grow up fat and happy and live forever, without need of producing a single bloom… either to reproduce its own species … or share its own particular brand of beauty with the world…

Thank God, it’s never too late to learn important life lessons. And good it is, that everyday life seems ever ready to serve up just-in-time lessons: Live and learn; Learn and live. Yes, woe to me…if I don’t live and learn lessons from my little Lenten cactus. After going on a water and sunshine diet for most of January, my wilderness teacher offered up s single perfect bloom this week, all creamy white and long with a hot pink stamen.

Gorgeous in its solitude. Gorgeous for its solitude.

And by the looks of it, a lonely-only bloomer it may stay; a single short parable maybe all this late boomer will produce this month.

But I don’t mind. Even though it’s bloomin’ late, my single-bloom cactus leaves me with enough lessons to ponder this liturgical season.

Today, a wintry mix of rain and snow falls outside my window. But we might as well ignore that old news … because in the time it has taken my eyes to move from computer to window screen, the light gray sky has become full of fat, fluffy snowflakes.

So it goes with Oklahoma weather… and life and… well, I’ve been thinking of late… those relationships with whom we love more than words can convey. All of them suffer droughts and seasons of moisture and gladness and sorrow and times when things just seem to sync and other times when we just feel walloped by our powerlessness to fix or make things better.

City officials — was it last week or the week before last?– began brainstorming on further water conservation strategies should our unwelcomed drought linger on and on into infinity and beyond. Lawn and garden irrigation may be outright prohibited — and/or those of us who use more that what the city deems “their fair share” may incur a surcharge. For now, we are under a winter rationing plan, following rules once reserved only for the depths of summer hell … which means, that all my big ‘ole spring gardening dreams have blown away in a cloud of dust.

There would have been a time, not that long ago, when I would have plunged ahead with plans of all sorts, come the proverbial hell or high water. Why, by now, I would have already planned which new shrubs would be going where..and lined up contractors to break up old backyard concrete so that new paths could be drawn to enlarge and soften and fill in new garden lines. So, I wonder: Is it age that causes me to listen to the weather forecasts and adjust plans, to listen more closely to what people say (or don’t), or to listen to the rhythm of my days in order to move more in keeping with their changing beat?

The local AMC movie theater is offering a 2-1 special for anyone who wishes to view the Academy award nominated film, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Half of me wants to go, because I know this film would stir my soul and sprinkle in new seeds of thought, that only this particular piece of art has in its treasure box. But instead, I’m sitting here in from of my hearth, in my Hemingwayesque, Havana inspired living room — a decor, if you can believe it, that sprung out of last year’s visit to Key West, where we vacationed exactly a year ago today, while meanwhile, back at our OKC ranch-house, it was snowing and my youngest son was turning twenty-four and some of his siblings were picking him up for a birthday dinner of sushi.

So… though half of me wants to go to the movies the other half — perhaps the better half of me — prefers to watch the real-time show of falling snow outside my picture window. Already, the trees are sugar-coated with snow.

I tend not to sugar-coat life — just ask my children — and too often, what I say is just more than they can take. It makes me sad that I can’t do better… that I can’t share my thoughts in a way that is healing rather than hurting, where words spoken would fall gently, oh so soft and quiet and beautiful like this snow falling outside my window. When I serve up too much truth… I tell myself I’ll do better. And maybe, sometimes, I do. But for better and worse, I am who I am, and I slip into old molds of living, often hurting those I love most without trying, and, often, without even knowing it. Until days or weeks or months down the road, when I begin to wonder why I haven’t heard from this loved on or that one….

It makes me crazy. So much so that I try to rationalize away the pain by telling myself that my children (and others whom I love) have many, many friends willing to put the best gloss on life… and that, well, they have only one me… who is willing to level with them… who is willing to share the unvarnished truth with them… well, at least, the truth according to Moi… but it’s poor comfort with no staying power, that melts as fast as an Oklahoma snow.

Today is President Lincoln’s birthday… and if you haven’t seen it… Lincoln would be another wonderful Oscar nominated film to catch today… if you are not catching, like me, a better reality show of snowflakes falling on a drought-thirsty land.

Today is also my youngest son’s twenty-fifth birthday… and I wish… oh, I wish for all those sorts of things that mothers everywhere probably wish for their children, you know, that all his dreams might come true and that life itself, everyday, will be better and more magical than the best dreams can conjure.

Today is also Fat Tuesday, which means tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and then Lent and a forty-day season of time for thoughts such as these. What else can I say… but God, have mercy?

Had it not been for the controversy stirred up by that small panel of judges who decided the winner of the 1962 National Book Award for fiction, I would have devoted most of my November reading time to another novel. Those now classics that were heavily favored to win — J.D. Salinger’s Franny & Zooey and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 — were bested by an almost unknown novelist, Walker Percy, who received the award for his slim debut novel, The Moviegoer.

I like this story behind the story. I like it very much, in fact, since surprise keeps us on our toes and helps us not sleepwalk through life. The latter, in fact, is one of the central themes of the book. But in spite of the wake-up call offered between its covers, reading Walker Percy’s story sometimes left me limp with sadness. I don’t know why; but the fault may lie with the lurking villains of despair and malaise that cast long shadows upon the story. So with that, I’ll confess that it helps to read the novel on sunny days. And too, that it can’t hurt to linger on that epigraph, from Søren Kierkegaard, rather than rush past it as I did the first time:

“….the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair.”

The back cover summarizes the story as a “portrait of a boyish New Orleans stockbroker wavering between ennui and the longing for redemption… on the eve of his thirtieth birthday.” Inside the covers lies Percy’s beautiful prose and the deep thoughts he serves up like some trifle. There are too many to share. So I’ll move on by saying how I like that the story was a time capsule of the early sixties South. It was interesting to contrast life then and now, and ponder places where we’ve changed and where we have not. But it was meeting the unforgettable protagonist, Jack “Binx” Bollings, who narrates the tale in a colorful first-person voice, that hooked me from the first paragraph:

“This morning I got a note from my aunt asking me to come for lunch. I know what this means. Since I go there every Sunday for dinner and today is Wednesday, it can mean only one thing: she wants to have one of her serious talks. It will be extremely grave, either a piece of bad news about her stepdaughter Kate or else a serious talk about me, about the future and what I ought to do. It is enough to scare the wits out of anyone, yet I confess I do not find the prospect altogether unpleasant.”

I’ve read that Percy admired Tolstoy. He mentions War and Peace in the text. And like Tolstoy, Percy possesses the courage and willingness to touch upon weighty matters affecting the human spirit. Over and over, I learned of some loved one Jack had lost. His brother on page one or two. His father, a few more pages in. Others, later on. But physical death aside, Percy touches upon the illusory curing power of money and sex and drugs and religion and even war. And since this story is set in the sixties South, there was plenty of discrimination to bump up against: Women and racial and not just between blacks and whites. Sometimes, Binx stepped on my toes with his truth. In one passage, it happened to my particular truth du jour:

“Once I thought of going into law or medicine or even pure science. I even dreamed of doing something great. But there is much to be said for giving up such grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable, a life without the old longings; selling stocks and bonds and mutual funds; quitting work at five o’clock like everyone else…”

I’ve been thinking a lot on how sweet life would be if I were not trying to realize that dream of fictionalizing my father’s story, who coincidentally, also happened to be a moviegoer by the name of Jack. It would be easy to coast through days if my biggest challenge turned on the decision of what to fix for dinner. How easy and lovely to while away hours in the garden or painting the exterior of my house or my dining room for the fifth time. What joy to simply feast upon the artistic endeavors of others …while enjoying the taste of a few bonbons on my tongue.

Too bad the The Moviegoer is not a bonbon eating sort of book. Instead, it’s the sort some keep company with every Lent. Its existential subject is made for mulling over. And its New Orleans setting into time makes it perfect for Lent, since the story takes place the week leading up to Mardi Gras. But writing this hits me hard, since Lent is not about feasting and bonbons at all — and more about fasting in the wilderness and facing up to personal demons — for forty days and nights — which biblically speaking, translates to a helluva lot of time.

So do forgive me… if I leave those ends a little loose, to keep the noose from growing tight, in order to travel down a different line of thought. Having spent a lot of time with this cagey old novel, I know that good ‘ole Binx would agree that it’s easier to be a spectator than a doer. It’s much more enjoyable to read (or see) a good story than to try and write one. And if my year boils down to any thoughts on writing, it’s that it takes a lot of desire and hard work to write fiction. And that I’ve learned I lack what it takes in both departments. Which is not all bad, since this year spent working on my father’s story has shattered whatever false illusions I once had about story-making.

I part ways with The Moviegoer with a lot to wonder over. For one, if I can’t imagine writing at a publishable quality, how difficult was it for the newly published author Walker Percy to think his writing ‘good enough’ for some prestigious award. His own publisher didn’t support his nomination; it came by unconventional channels, which a surprised Percy didn’t learn of until a few days after the ceremony.

I also wonder over those other ten finalists who lost that year. How did they feel after coming so close — after all that hard work — with all those expectations of taking the prize?

I’d like to think that maybe a few of them pick up The Moviegoer to see what Percy had to say. It’s not a bad notion to think upon… for some sunny day…or over forty days of some upcoming Lent. If the idea grows to reality in my life, it would make my third time to read it. I don’t mind saying that there’s something holy and complete about that number three that I’ve always found difficult to resist. Much harder than a mere box of bonbons.